Fall Classic - Day 1

The Fall Classic - a three-race mountain bike "stage race", and the last stop on the Mountain States Cup endurance series - went down this past weekend in Breckenridge, CO.  Yes, the one they charged three race fees for.  If you're keeping score at home - that's $120 for a weekend of racing.  If it sounds ridiculous to you - it is.  But I had a good shot at winning the overall series, so wanted to close it out.

Stage 1 was a circuit race, 4 laps on a 2.2-mile track at the Breckenridge Nordic Center.  Relatively flat - lost/gained about 300 feet per lap.  Fast singletrack all the way around, with two tunnels under roads, one bridge over a road, and a fast rocky descent and four-switchback grunt climb.  Off the start, I was sitting on the wheel of Adam Heil, the Colorado STXC State Champion (CO-Motion Sports), just marking my guy.  Adam's a powerful short-track racer, and I really wanted to have a good race to give myself a shot at the win.  About halfway through the first lap, three of us had separated from the rest of the pack:  Adam, myself, and a pretty strong kid from the 15-18 group; I got impatient and took off.  Opened up about 35-40 seconds off the front across the remainder of laps 1, 2 and 3.  Starting into lap 4, Adam started closing up, cutting the gap to about 10 seconds, where I could see him behind me.  Threw the hammer down for the last half of the fourth lap, down the descent and up the switchbacks, and opened it back up for a 22 second win.  Tim Mt. Pleasant (a local Eagle-ite) came in with a hard-fought third place finish.

As soon as we were done with the circuit race, we headed across town to Carter Park to participate in Stage 2, a time-trial format hill climb.  This course was about 3.5 miles long, gaining around 1075 feet - climbing from Carter Park up to Sally Barber Mine.  The course consisted of steep singletrack switchbacks right out of the start, transitioning to steady rocky singletrack climbing through the trees, then merging onto a 2% grade dirt road for nearly a mile, and finally kicked up to 10% grade for the last quarter mile.  Adam opted not to race (hill climbs aren't his cup o' tea), which left Tim and myself to duke it out up the mountain.  We started on 30 second intervals, with the four or five 15-18 guys in front of me.  Pulled off of each of them, catching them all before we even got to the road.  Legs felt good today, as I pulled away for the win in the hill climb as well.  Tim made his way to the top; after Stage 2, I was holding a 16 minute lead in Cat 2 19-29 for the XC race on Sunday.  Though it didn't matter in any standings or competitions, I was in 2nd overall in Cat 2 across all age categories, +2:14 back from Les Handy in the 30-39 group.